Funny, (odd), one this morning....

COO, (my boss), comes to me and confesses that she has over 14,000 items in her Deleted Items folder and it is making her Outlook sluggish. In her defense she states that when she tried to empty the deleted items she is told that she is unable.

So, I Terminal Services into the Exchange server, open Explorer, open the M: drive navigate to her deleted items folder, select all files and tell it to delete them. It fails. Hmmm.. Open command prompt, nav to her deleted items folder and tell it to delete *.eml. It works except it errors out on six files with the error "Cannot find the file specified". Back to Explorer... Right click and select Properties. All the information is there... Odd... Back to the command prompt. Issue Attrib *.*. Three of them have ASH and the other three have just A. Issue attrib -H *.* which promptly fails... Odder... Feeling stuck because I really don't want to try using any tools on it because, after all, this is the M: drive... The most squirrely file system MS has ever invented.

No problem... Google is my friend he says to himself... It's far from conclusive but there is a "hint" in a seemingly unrelated article. It hints at the fact that some files can only be read by a MAPI based application... Hmm... I thought Outlook was a MAPI based application!! Your hero enters Outlook Web Access, (it being another MAPI based application as far as he knows), and forges his supervisors credentials. I select the "Empty Deleted Items" icon and it asks me if I'm sure... Not expecting success I select "Yep, go ahead and nuke the darned thing" otherwise known as "Yes"... Bingo, the deleted items all disappear... Naaahhh... Can't be... Go back to the Exchange server and lo and behold they really have gone...

I don't know why... But now I know how... Which is most important...